Life and Death: Helping Families On Big Questions

THE INFORMED PATIENT By LAURA LANDRO Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2008, page D1 In hospitals, medical-ethics teams are increasingly the arbiters of agonizing health decisions: helping parents and doctors plan care for a dying child, mediating among family members who disagree about removing a parent from life support, or steering patients in denial about a terminal illness toward end-of-life care. But as the number of hospitals with ethics consulting services has grown in recent years, so have questions about how qualified some of these professionals are to render life-and-death advice. The complex ethical issues arising from new life-prolonging medical technologies are throwing up new challenges. And hospitals face potential legal liability if patients and families feel they haven't been properly counseled or provided with all the information they need to make decisions. In addition to the Wall Street Journal print edition, the complete article is available at: http://online.wsj.com/